sweeter than heaven and hotter than hell
Happy New Year, everyone! Here, have a giant rant. But before that, let me say that if you care about football and didn't see the glorious game the Saints played, you missed out. It was a great way to start off the year.
I read a Sherlock fic the other day that set me off on a ranting tangent to Laura. Since, hey, I have a journal, and apparently people like it when I write in here, I figured I might flesh this out into a proper entry. It's behind a cut because it discusses self-injury, specifically cutting, and I didn't want to upset anyone who finds that distasteful.
There's a huge stigma associated with self-injury. This is a fact. I'm going to write this talking about cutting because that's where my personal experience is, but a lot of it can be extended to most other forms of self-injury (except the physical health part, because I don't have the background to speak in an educated fashion about that). Most people see cuts on someone's arm and leap to conclusions which include but are not limited to:
-that person is depressed
-that person is suicidal
-that person is unhappy
-that person is acting out
-that person is just trying to get some control over some aspect of his/her life
-that person hates him/herself
-that person is venting unhappy feelings onto his/her own body
Immediate assumptions that are often made without investigation or the use of common sense include:
-that habit is dangerous
-that person could seriously injure or accidentally kill him/herself
-that person is unaware of or ignoring the danger in favor of temporary relief from his/her uncontrolled life
-that person could give him/herself an infection, because he/she is not taking steps to prevent it
That's really just the tip of the iceberg, but I list them all out in case you guys have never been subjected to these. The range of them is startling at first; the utter stubborn blindness of the people who make these assumptions and stand by them even when told they aren't true is ... beyond startling. It starts out at baffling and edges quickly into infuriating the first time I tell someone "No, I'm not depressed, I just like the way it feels" and they don't believe me. "You must be depressed or you wouldn't do this, unless you're just doing it for the attention." My response, as you can probably imagine, starts at "How dare you tell me what I do or don't feel, what my motives are, when all you know about me is that I make myself bleed?" and scales rapidly upward from there.
The truth of it is that a lot of people, especially teenagers, who cut *are* depressed. They are upset, angry, in pain, looking for control, looking for release - one or more of the above. However, that's like saying a lot of people who smoke weed are lazy and unmotivated. It's true, but it's no reason to ignore the evidence in front of your face if you're looking at a person who smokes weed and is a successful software engineer, a student who just got admitted to med school, a woman in her fifties who is a corporate lawyer, etc. It's one thing to note trends, but it's another to insist that a trend must be true in every case, even when confronted by evidence that it is not. If I tell someone I'm not depressed or angry and every other part of my life supports that claim, it's beyond insulting to have that person go, "Well, you must be, because you cut yourself." No, I mustn't be; the inability of your closed little mind to understand my motives doesn't mean you get to dismiss them and call me a liar to my face. Because that's what it is, when I tell someone that this is how I feel, this is why I act, and that person tells me I'm wrong. At best, that person is being condescending and patronizing, saying that I don't actually know my own motives or feelings. At worst, that person is calling me a liar. I am not a big fan of either.
There are people, some of whom I know personally, who cut for reasons completely unrelated to emotional upset. Well, I should clarify that, and I'll talk about my personal experience. Mine is not unique, though; I've spoken with others who have similar feelings and experiences. Cutting, for me, is not a means of acting out, or punishing myself or anyone else, or exerting control. It releases endorphins and also feels good in the process - it's functionally identical to running, yoga, or sex in that regard (or most other physical activities, I know; those are just three fairly common to my life).
There is no physical danger when someone cuts for the sake of cutting (as opposed to someone who is suicidal slitting her wrists). This is something I am sick of seeing perpetuated, especially in contexts where people should know better. If a person grabs a broken bottle out of the gutter and drags that down the inside of his arm, then yes, there are obviously significant health concerns, starting with infection and ranging up to things like severed tendons or destroyed veins and thus death. But if the person in question has a box of razor blades and etches designs in the 'top' of his arm, then washes them off and throws away the blade, using a new one each time, there's pretty much zero health risk there. There are all kinds of activities that are dangerous if you approach them in a stupid, moronic way. This is one of few where it is automatically assumed that (a) there isn't a safe way to approach it and (b) anyone who does this is taking stupid risks with his/her health.
For the record, I don't consider scarring a "risk". If a person can't figure out that cutting his/her skin has the potential to leave a scar, that person has abiding issues that have nothing to do with self-injury and everything to do with his/her brain being missing.
When I cut, it's because I like the feeling on a purely physical level, the same way I like it when Kevin brushes my hair or when I sit in the sunshine or when I eat delicious food. This is not to say that I think everyone should like it; I'm a masochist and I like (the vast majority of varieties of) pain. It is what it is. Sometimes, I do it because I'm upset and it's soothing - just like I go for a run, do a yoga routine, clean my bedroom, alphabetize my books, or play Rock Band. The stigma is hugely undeserved and deeply aggravating to me.
There are people who are genuinely emotionally disturbed who cut, but what needs to be addressed in those situations is the emotional disturbance, not the behavior of self-injury. The point is not a sequence of incredibly shallow cuts; the point is feeling like his life is out of control, or wanting her parents to really *see* her, or whatever the emotional problem is. In the story I read, one friend made another promise not to cut without ever asking about the motives behind it, which is stupidly blind. The same friend offered holding an ice cube as an alternative, which is just stupid. It's a different physical sensation entirely, and I am fairly positive that holding an ice cube until it melts (much less three, which is what happened in the story) will inflict equally serious tissue damage to cuts as shallow as cat scratches. The character who cuts somehow, in the third part of the story, manages to pass out from blood loss from a single cut on the front of his shin. Oh, and both of these characters have professional medical training: the sympathetic friend is in fact a doctor. I do not have words to describe my disgust and disdain for this. ...Oh wait, forgot who I was there for a minute-- yes I do.
It's unrealistic on all kinds of levels. It's a positively absurd lack of basic medical common sense - look at your shin. Feel how it's essentially skin over bone. How much effort would you have to put into a cut to inflict real damage there? We're talking superficial, self-inflicted cuts with a razor blade here, not debilitating wounds inflicted by an enemy warrior armed with a real weapon. It's misleading and mis-representative of the entire mindset, not to mention insultingly dumbed-down, generalized, and stereotyped. There's also all kinds of things said by the doctor character that are patently untrue, including "I know most people who self-injure have a strict ritual associated with it." Some do, some don't, and any kind of cursory research would turn that up.
I'm offended on one hand as someone who is being essentially caricatured into a tiny box by this kind of writing, and I'm offended on the other hand as a writer. The most disappointing part is that the beginning of the story was beautifully written, and then it turned into uninformed sermonizing, culminating in True Love Heals The Inner Pain That Leads To Self Injury, a insultingly saccharine moral that makes my teeth hurt to contemplate.
*exhales* It's possible I take this a little too seriously. But I've been put in a situation where if I do what I want, if I engage in an activity that affects only my body and only in a distinctly temporary way, I stand to lose my job (or at least not have my contract renewed) unless I hide it (which, here, runs the much more serious risk of heat exhaustion). It's the reaction people have to brightly colored hair or tattoos or piercings taken to an absurd extreme. In high school, I had teachers and parents interrogate me and then call me a liar when I answered them honestly. I had well-meaning friends try to make me promise never to do it again, convinced that they had a right to intervene in my private life because it was "for my own good." I had random strangers judge me and ask me extremely personal questions, as if they had a right to know how I felt just because they thought that one part of my physical appearance might be related to my feelings. I went through all of that despite having fucking stellar grades, participating in multiple extracurricular competitions, sustaining healthy friendships and occasional romantic connections, and being a responsible daughter in terms of doing chores and helping out at home. There was not a single damn thing in my life that would have said "disturbed, depressed, suicidal, or acting out" other than a couple of cuts on my arms, but the stigma of self-injury is so extreme that the visual impact of a couple of cuts effectively wiped out people's awareness of the entire rest of my life. It is invasive and condescending and smotheringly patronizing and insulting, and it stems from (a) people's unwillingness to do basic research and (b) people's unwillingness to believe what they find/are told. And it annoys me.
tl;dr version: Cutting is not necessarily indicative of deep emotional turmoil, and if someone says that it isn't, that person should be believed. Also, assumptions and stereotypes suck and should always yield to firsthand testimony, no matter how much more comfortable it is to just believe the stereotypes.
~
Today I want
to resolve nothing.
I only want to walk
a little longer in the cold
blessing of the rain,
and lift my face to it.
~"New Year's Day", Kim Addonizio
I read a Sherlock fic the other day that set me off on a ranting tangent to Laura. Since, hey, I have a journal, and apparently people like it when I write in here, I figured I might flesh this out into a proper entry. It's behind a cut because it discusses self-injury, specifically cutting, and I didn't want to upset anyone who finds that distasteful.
There's a huge stigma associated with self-injury. This is a fact. I'm going to write this talking about cutting because that's where my personal experience is, but a lot of it can be extended to most other forms of self-injury (except the physical health part, because I don't have the background to speak in an educated fashion about that). Most people see cuts on someone's arm and leap to conclusions which include but are not limited to:
-that person is depressed
-that person is suicidal
-that person is unhappy
-that person is acting out
-that person is just trying to get some control over some aspect of his/her life
-that person hates him/herself
-that person is venting unhappy feelings onto his/her own body
Immediate assumptions that are often made without investigation or the use of common sense include:
-that habit is dangerous
-that person could seriously injure or accidentally kill him/herself
-that person is unaware of or ignoring the danger in favor of temporary relief from his/her uncontrolled life
-that person could give him/herself an infection, because he/she is not taking steps to prevent it
That's really just the tip of the iceberg, but I list them all out in case you guys have never been subjected to these. The range of them is startling at first; the utter stubborn blindness of the people who make these assumptions and stand by them even when told they aren't true is ... beyond startling. It starts out at baffling and edges quickly into infuriating the first time I tell someone "No, I'm not depressed, I just like the way it feels" and they don't believe me. "You must be depressed or you wouldn't do this, unless you're just doing it for the attention." My response, as you can probably imagine, starts at "How dare you tell me what I do or don't feel, what my motives are, when all you know about me is that I make myself bleed?" and scales rapidly upward from there.
The truth of it is that a lot of people, especially teenagers, who cut *are* depressed. They are upset, angry, in pain, looking for control, looking for release - one or more of the above. However, that's like saying a lot of people who smoke weed are lazy and unmotivated. It's true, but it's no reason to ignore the evidence in front of your face if you're looking at a person who smokes weed and is a successful software engineer, a student who just got admitted to med school, a woman in her fifties who is a corporate lawyer, etc. It's one thing to note trends, but it's another to insist that a trend must be true in every case, even when confronted by evidence that it is not. If I tell someone I'm not depressed or angry and every other part of my life supports that claim, it's beyond insulting to have that person go, "Well, you must be, because you cut yourself." No, I mustn't be; the inability of your closed little mind to understand my motives doesn't mean you get to dismiss them and call me a liar to my face. Because that's what it is, when I tell someone that this is how I feel, this is why I act, and that person tells me I'm wrong. At best, that person is being condescending and patronizing, saying that I don't actually know my own motives or feelings. At worst, that person is calling me a liar. I am not a big fan of either.
There are people, some of whom I know personally, who cut for reasons completely unrelated to emotional upset. Well, I should clarify that, and I'll talk about my personal experience. Mine is not unique, though; I've spoken with others who have similar feelings and experiences. Cutting, for me, is not a means of acting out, or punishing myself or anyone else, or exerting control. It releases endorphins and also feels good in the process - it's functionally identical to running, yoga, or sex in that regard (or most other physical activities, I know; those are just three fairly common to my life).
There is no physical danger when someone cuts for the sake of cutting (as opposed to someone who is suicidal slitting her wrists). This is something I am sick of seeing perpetuated, especially in contexts where people should know better. If a person grabs a broken bottle out of the gutter and drags that down the inside of his arm, then yes, there are obviously significant health concerns, starting with infection and ranging up to things like severed tendons or destroyed veins and thus death. But if the person in question has a box of razor blades and etches designs in the 'top' of his arm, then washes them off and throws away the blade, using a new one each time, there's pretty much zero health risk there. There are all kinds of activities that are dangerous if you approach them in a stupid, moronic way. This is one of few where it is automatically assumed that (a) there isn't a safe way to approach it and (b) anyone who does this is taking stupid risks with his/her health.
For the record, I don't consider scarring a "risk". If a person can't figure out that cutting his/her skin has the potential to leave a scar, that person has abiding issues that have nothing to do with self-injury and everything to do with his/her brain being missing.
When I cut, it's because I like the feeling on a purely physical level, the same way I like it when Kevin brushes my hair or when I sit in the sunshine or when I eat delicious food. This is not to say that I think everyone should like it; I'm a masochist and I like (the vast majority of varieties of) pain. It is what it is. Sometimes, I do it because I'm upset and it's soothing - just like I go for a run, do a yoga routine, clean my bedroom, alphabetize my books, or play Rock Band. The stigma is hugely undeserved and deeply aggravating to me.
There are people who are genuinely emotionally disturbed who cut, but what needs to be addressed in those situations is the emotional disturbance, not the behavior of self-injury. The point is not a sequence of incredibly shallow cuts; the point is feeling like his life is out of control, or wanting her parents to really *see* her, or whatever the emotional problem is. In the story I read, one friend made another promise not to cut without ever asking about the motives behind it, which is stupidly blind. The same friend offered holding an ice cube as an alternative, which is just stupid. It's a different physical sensation entirely, and I am fairly positive that holding an ice cube until it melts (much less three, which is what happened in the story) will inflict equally serious tissue damage to cuts as shallow as cat scratches. The character who cuts somehow, in the third part of the story, manages to pass out from blood loss from a single cut on the front of his shin. Oh, and both of these characters have professional medical training: the sympathetic friend is in fact a doctor. I do not have words to describe my disgust and disdain for this. ...Oh wait, forgot who I was there for a minute-- yes I do.
It's unrealistic on all kinds of levels. It's a positively absurd lack of basic medical common sense - look at your shin. Feel how it's essentially skin over bone. How much effort would you have to put into a cut to inflict real damage there? We're talking superficial, self-inflicted cuts with a razor blade here, not debilitating wounds inflicted by an enemy warrior armed with a real weapon. It's misleading and mis-representative of the entire mindset, not to mention insultingly dumbed-down, generalized, and stereotyped. There's also all kinds of things said by the doctor character that are patently untrue, including "I know most people who self-injure have a strict ritual associated with it." Some do, some don't, and any kind of cursory research would turn that up.
I'm offended on one hand as someone who is being essentially caricatured into a tiny box by this kind of writing, and I'm offended on the other hand as a writer. The most disappointing part is that the beginning of the story was beautifully written, and then it turned into uninformed sermonizing, culminating in True Love Heals The Inner Pain That Leads To Self Injury, a insultingly saccharine moral that makes my teeth hurt to contemplate.
*exhales* It's possible I take this a little too seriously. But I've been put in a situation where if I do what I want, if I engage in an activity that affects only my body and only in a distinctly temporary way, I stand to lose my job (or at least not have my contract renewed) unless I hide it (which, here, runs the much more serious risk of heat exhaustion). It's the reaction people have to brightly colored hair or tattoos or piercings taken to an absurd extreme. In high school, I had teachers and parents interrogate me and then call me a liar when I answered them honestly. I had well-meaning friends try to make me promise never to do it again, convinced that they had a right to intervene in my private life because it was "for my own good." I had random strangers judge me and ask me extremely personal questions, as if they had a right to know how I felt just because they thought that one part of my physical appearance might be related to my feelings. I went through all of that despite having fucking stellar grades, participating in multiple extracurricular competitions, sustaining healthy friendships and occasional romantic connections, and being a responsible daughter in terms of doing chores and helping out at home. There was not a single damn thing in my life that would have said "disturbed, depressed, suicidal, or acting out" other than a couple of cuts on my arms, but the stigma of self-injury is so extreme that the visual impact of a couple of cuts effectively wiped out people's awareness of the entire rest of my life. It is invasive and condescending and smotheringly patronizing and insulting, and it stems from (a) people's unwillingness to do basic research and (b) people's unwillingness to believe what they find/are told. And it annoys me.
tl;dr version: Cutting is not necessarily indicative of deep emotional turmoil, and if someone says that it isn't, that person should be believed. Also, assumptions and stereotypes suck and should always yield to firsthand testimony, no matter how much more comfortable it is to just believe the stereotypes.
~
Today I want
to resolve nothing.
I only want to walk
a little longer in the cold
blessing of the rain,
and lift my face to it.
~"New Year's Day", Kim Addonizio